Part 31 (2/2)

[Sidenote: Principles of Jansenism.]

Nor was the Jansenist controversy merely a discussion of grace and free will. The principles of Jansenism, when carried out, tended to secure independence to the national church, and to free the consciences of men from the horrible power of their spiritual confessors. Jansenism was a timid protest against spiritual tyranny, a mild kind of Puritanism, which found sympathy with many people in France. The Parliament of Paris caught the spirit of freedom, and protected the Jansenists and those who sympathized with them. It so happened that a certain bishop published a charge to his clergy which was strongly imbued with the independent doctrines of the Jansenists.

He was tried and condemned by a provincial council, and banished by the government. The Parliament of Paris, as the guardian of the law, took up the quarrel, and Cardinal Fleury was obliged to resort to a _Bed of Justice_ in order to secure the registry of a decree. A Bed of Justice was the personal appearance of the sovereign in the supreme judicial tribunal of the nation, and his command to the members of it to obey his injunctions was the last resort of absolute power. The parliament, of course, obeyed, but protested the next day, and drew up resolutions which declared the temporal power to be independent of the spiritual. It then proceeded to Meudon, one of the royal palaces, to lay its remonstrance before the king; and Louis XV., indignant and astonished, refused to see the members. The original controversy was forgotten, and the cause of the parliament, which was the cause of liberty, became the cause of the nation. The resistance of the parliament was technically unsuccessful, yet, nevertheless, sowed the seeds of popular discontent, and contributed to that great insurrection which finally overturned the throne.

[Sidenote: Functions of the Parliament.]

[Sidenote: The Bull Unigenitus.]

It may be asked how the Parliament of Paris became a judicial tribunal, rather than a legislative a.s.sembly, as in England. When the Justinian code was introduced into French jurisprudence, in the latter part of the Middle Ages, the old feudal and clerical judges--the barons and bishops--were incapable of expounding it, and a new cla.s.s of men arose--the lawyers, whose exclusive business it was to study the laws. Being best acquainted with them, they entered upon the functions of judges, and the secular and clerical lords yielded to their opinions. The great barons, however, still continued to sit in the judicial tribunals, although ignorant of the new jurisprudence; and their decisions were directed by the opinions of the lawyers who had obtained a seat in their body, as is the case at present in the English House of Lords when it sits as a judicial body. The necessity of providing some permanent repository for the royal edicts, induced the kings of France to enroll them in the journals of the courts of parliament, being the highest judicial tribunal; and the members of these courts gradually availed themselves of this custom to dispute the legality of any edict which had not been thus registered. As the influence of the States General declined, the power of the parliament increased. The encroachments of the papacy first engaged its attention, and then the management of the finances by the ministers of Francis I. called forth remonstrances. During the war of the Fronde, the parliament absolutely refused to register the royal decrees. But Louis XIV. was sufficiently powerful to suppress the spirit of independence, and accordingly entered the court, during the first years of his reign, with a whip in his hand, and compelled it to register his edicts. Nor did any murmur afterwards escape the body, until, at the close of his reign the members opposed the bull _Unigenitus_--that which condemned the Jansenists--as an infringement of the liberties of the Gallican Church. And no sooner had the great monarch died, than, contrary to his will, they vested the regency in the hands of the Duke of Orleans. Then freedom of expostulation respecting the ruinous schemes of Law induced him to banish them, and they only obtained their recall by degrading concessions. Their next opposition was during the administration of Fleury. The minister of finance made an attempt to inquire into the wealth of the clergy, which raised the jealousy of the order; and the clergy, in order to divert the attention of the court, revived the opposition of the parliament to the bull _Unigenitus_. It was resolved by the clergy to demand confessional notes from dying persons, and that these notes should be signed by priests adhering to the bull, before extreme unction should be given. The Archbishop of Paris, at the head of the French clergy, was opposed by the parliament, and this high judicial court imprisoned such of the clergy as refused to administer the sacraments. The king, under the guidance of Fleury, forbade the parliament to take cognizance of ecclesiastical proceedings, and to suspend its prosecutions. Instead of acquiescing, the parliament presented new remonstrances, and the members refused to attend to any other functions, and resolved that they could not obey this injunction without violating their consciences. They cited the Bishop of Orleans before their tribunal, and ordered all his writings, which denied the jurisdiction of the court, to be publicly burnt by the executioner. By aid of the military, the parliament enforced the administration of the sacraments, and became so interested in the controversy as to neglect other official duties. The king, indignant, again banished the members, with the exception of four, whom he imprisoned. And, in order not to impede the administration of justice, the king established another tribunal for the prosecution of civil suits. But the lawyers, sympathizing with the parliament, refused to plead before the new court. This resolute conduct, and other evils happening at the time, induced the king to yield, in order to conciliate the people, and the parliament was recalled. This was a popular triumph, and the archbishop was banished in his turn. Shortly after, Cardinal Fleury died, and a new policy was adopted. The quarrel of the parliament and the clergy was forgotten in a still greater quarrel between the king and the Jesuits.

The policy of Fleury, like that of Walpole, was pacific; and yet, like him, he was forced into a war against his own convictions. And success attended the arms of France, in the colonial struggle with England, until Pitt took the helm of state.

Until the death of Fleury, in 1743, who administered affairs with wisdom, moderation, and incorruptible integrity, he was beloved, if he was not venerated. But after this event, a great change took place in his character and measures, and the reign of mistresses commenced, and to an extent unparalleled in the history of Europe. Louis XIV.

bestowed the revenue of the state on unworthy favorites, yet never allowed them to govern the nation; but Louis XV. intrusted the most important state matters to their direction, and the profoundest state secrets to their keeping.

[Sidenote: Madame de Pompadour.]

Among these mistresses, Madame de Pompadour was the most noted; a woman of talent, but abominably unprincipled. Ambition was her master-pa.s.sion, and her _boudoir_ was the council chamber of the royal ministers. Most of the great men of France paid court to her, and to neglect her was social ruin. Even Voltaire praised her beauty, and Montesquieu flattered her intellect. And her extravagance was equal to her audacity. She insisted on drawing bills on the treasury without specifying the service. The comptroller-general was in despair, and the state was involved in inextricable embarra.s.sments.

It was through her influence that the Duke de Choiseul was made the successor of Fleury. He was not deficient in talent, but his administration proved unfortunate. Under his rule, Louis lost the Canadas, and France plunged into a contest with Frederic the Great.

The Seven Years' War, which occurred during his administration, had made the age an epoch; but as this is to be considered in the chapter on Frederic III., no notice of it will be taken in this connection.

The most memorable event which arose out of the policy and conduct of Choiseul was the fall of the Jesuits.

[Sidenote: The Jesuits.]

Their arts and influence had obtained from the pope the bull _Unigenitus_, designed to suppress their enemies, the Jansenists; and the king, governed by Fleury, had taken their side.

But they were so unwise as to quarrel with the powerful mistress of Louis XV. They despised her, and defied her hatred. Indeed, the Jesuits had climbed to so great a height that they were scornful of popular clamor, and even of regal distrust. But there is no man, and no body of men, who can venture to provoke enmity with impunity; and destruction often comes from a source the least suspected, and apparently the least to be feared. Who could have supposed that the ruin of this powerful body, which had reigned so proudly in Christendom for a century; which had imposed its Briareus's arms on the necks of princes; which had its confessors in the courts of the most absolute monarchs; which, with its hundred eyes, had penetrated the secrets of all the cabinets of Europe; and which had succeeded in suppressing in so many places every insurrection of human intelligence, in spite of the fears of kings, the jealousy of the other monastic orders, and the inveterate animosity of philosophers and statesmen,--would receive a fatal wound from the hands of a woman, who scandalized by her vices even the depraved court of an enervated prince? But so it was. Madame de Pompadour hated the Jesuits because they attempted to undermine her influence with the king. And she incited the prime minister, whom she had raised by her arts to power, to unite with Pombal in Portugal, in order to effect their ruin.

[Sidenote: Exposure of the Jesuits.]

In no country was the power of the Jesuits more irresistible than in Portugal. There their ascendency was complete. But the prime minister of Joseph I., the Marquis of Pombal, a man of great energy, had been insulted by a lady of the highest rank, and he swore revenge. An opportunity was soon afforded. The king happened to be fired at and wounded in his palace by some unknown enemy. The blow was aimed at the objects of the minister's vengeance--the Marchioness of Tavora, her husband, her family, and her friends the Jesuits. And royal vengeance followed, not merely on an ill.u.s.trious family, but on those persons whom this family befriended. The Jesuits were expelled in the most summary manner from the kingdom. The Duke de Choiseul and Madame Pompadour hailed their misfortunes with delight, and watched their opportunity for revenge. This was afforded by the failure of La Valette, the head of the Jesuits at Martinique. It must be borne in mind that the Jesuits had embarked in commercial enterprises, while they were officiating as missionaries. La Valette aimed to monopolize, for his order, the trade with the West Indies, which commercial ambition excited the jealousy of mercantile cla.s.ses in France, and they threw difficulties in his way. And it so happened that some of his most valuable s.h.i.+ps were taken and plundered by the English cruisers, which calamity, happening at a time of embarra.s.sment, caused his bills to be protested, and his bankers to stop payment. They, indignant, accused the Jesuits, as a body, of peculation and fraud, and demanded repayment from the order. Had the Jesuits been wise, they would have satisfied the ruined bankers. But who is wise on the brink of destruction? _”Quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat.”_ The Jesuits refused to sacrifice La Valette to the interests of their order, which course would have been in accordance with their general policy. The matter was carried before the Parliament of Paris, and the whole nation was interested in its result. It was decided by this supreme judicial tribunal, that the Jesuits were responsible for the debts of La Valette. But the commercial injury was weak in comparison with the moral. In the course of legal proceedings, the books and rule of the Jesuits were demanded--that mysterious rule which had never been exposed to the public eye, and which had been so carefully guarded. When this rule was produced, all minor questions vanished; mistresses, bankruptcies, politics, finances, wars,--all became insignificant, compared with those questions which affected the position and welfare of the society. Pascal became a popular idol, and ”Tartuffe grew pale before Escobar.” The reports of the trial lay on every toilet table, and persons of both s.e.xes, and of all ages and conditions, read with avidity the writings of the casuists. Nothing was talked about but ”probability,” ”surrender of conscience,” and ”mental reservations.” Philosophers grew jealous of the absorbing interest with which every thing pertaining to the _regime_ of the Jesuits was read, and of the growing popularity of the Jansenists, who had exposed it. ”What,” said Voltaire, ”will it profit us to be delivered from the foxes, if we are to be given up to the wolves?” But the philosopher had been among the first to raise the cry of alarm against the Jesuits, and it was no easy thing to allay the storm.

[Sidenote: Their Expulsion from France.]

The Jesuits, in their distress, had only one friend sufficiently powerful to protect them, and he was the king. He had been their best friend, and he still wished to come to their rescue. He had been taught to honor them, and he had learned to fear them. He stood in fear of a.s.sa.s.sination, and dreaded a rupture with so powerful and unscrupulous a body. And his resistance to the prosecution would have been insurmountable, had it not been for the capriciousness of his temper, which more than balanced his superst.i.tious fears. His minister and his mistress circ.u.mvented him. They represented that, as the parliament and the nation were both aroused against the Jesuits, his resistance would necessarily provoke a new Fronde. Nothing he dreaded so much as civil war. The wavering monarch, placed in the painful necessity of choosing, as he supposed, between a war and the ruin of his best friends, yielded to the solicitations of his artful advisers.

But he yielded with a moderation which did him honor. He would not consent to the expulsion of the Jesuits until efforts had been made to secure their reform. He accordingly caused letters to be written to Rome, demanding an immediate attention to the subject. Choiseul himself prepared the scheme of reformation. But the Jesuits would not hear of any retrenchment of their power or privileges. ”Let us remain as we are, or let us exist no longer,” was their reply. The parliament, the people, the minister, and the mistress renewed their clamors. The parliament decreed that the const.i.tution of the society was an encroachment on the royal authority, and the king was obliged to yield. The members of the society were forbidden to wear the habit of the society, or to enjoy any clerical office or dignity. Their colleges were closed, their order was dissolved, and they were expelled from the kingdom with rigor and severity, in spite of the wishes of the king and many entreaties and tears from the zealous advocates of Catholicism, and even of religious education.

[Sidenote: Suppression in Spain.]

But the Jesuits were too powerful, even in their misfortunes, to be persecuted without the effort to annihilate them. Having secured their expulsion from France and Portugal, Choiseul and Pombal turned their attention to Spain, and so successfully intrigued, so artfully wrought on the jealousy and fears of Charles III., that this weak prince followed the example of Joseph I. and Louis XV. But the king and his minister D'Aranda, however, prosecuted their investigations with the utmost secrecy--did not even tell their allies of their movements. Of course, the Jesuits feared nothing from the king of Spain. But when his measures were completed, an edict was suddenly declared, decreeing the suppression of the order in the land of Inquisitions. The decree came like a thunderbolt, but was instantly executed. ”On the same day, 2d April, 1767, and at the same hour, in Spain, in Africa, in Asia, in America, and in all the islands belonging to the Spanish monarchy, the alcaldes of the towns opened their despatches from Madrid, by which they were ordered, on pain of the severest penalties, immediately to enter the establishments of the Jesuits, to seize their persons, expel them from their convents, and transport them, within twenty-four hours, to such places as were designated. Nor were the Jesuits permitted to carry away their money or their papers. Only a purse, a breviary, and some apparel were given them.”

The government feared a popular insurrection from an excitement so sudden, and a persecution so dreadful, and therefore issued express prohibition to all the ecclesiastical authorities to prevent any allusion to the event from the pulpit. All cla.s.ses were required to maintain absolute silence, and any controversy, or criticism, or remark was regarded as high treason. Such is despotism. Such is religious persecution, when fear, as well as hatred, prompts to injustice and cruelty.

The Jesuits, in their misfortunes, managed with consummate craft.

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